Ever since the early 1970s, the government has been determined to merge many of England’s councils and to cut their number. The motivation for this process is supposedly to increase efficiency, but there is negligible evidence to support this argument.
Experience in industry has strongly suggested that as organisations get bigger, they get less efficient, not more. This is because the larger the organisation, the more remote the front-line workers are from the directors. This, in turn, reduces communication between the shop-floor and the boardroom, which inevitably leads to reduced efficiency.
The first stage of the mergers was in 1972-1974, when councils such Rushden Urban District Council were abolished. (The accompanying photo shows the elegant building that RUDC originally occupied.)
RUDC and other local councils were merged into East Northamptonshire District Council (later renamed East Northamptonshire Council).
More recently, in 2021, East Northamptonshire Council was itself abolished and merged into North Northamptonshire Council.
Every round of mergers reduces the number of councillors. This forces each councillor to represent more residents. Since councillors don’t have case-workers (unlike MPs!), it increases the workload of the individual councillors.
Councillors do not receive a salary and must do their constituency casework in their spare time. As the workload increases, it is inevitable that the councillors will have less time per case. Eventually, this will reduce the service that they deliver to the public.
Now the government is trying to force through a further round of mergers. In our area, they are trying to force Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes to merge under a single, directly elected Mayor.
It is interesting that the original proposals included both West Northamptonshire and North Northamptonshire, but they were excluded from this South Midlands Authority.
However, on 18th March, NNC held a special meeting which agreed to progress establishing a Northants Foundation Strategic Authority with West Northants Council. West Northants Council made a similar decision on 13th March.
So it seems we may be going back to having a Northamptonshire wide council once again after having abolished the County Council only 5 years ago. Are we going round in circles?
